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Celebrating Mordecai Kaplan – Harold Schulweis M Celebrating Mordecai Kaplan – Harold Schulweis M. Jourdain: What? When I say: ‘Nicole, bring me my slippers and give me my nightcap,’ is that prose? Professor of Philosophy: Yes, sir. M. Jourdain: Good heavens! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing it. Moliere Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme American Jews, as Charles Liebman and others have observed, have been practicing Reconstructionist Judaism most of their lives without knowing it. More precisely, they have understood and accepted the message of Reconstructionism even when unable to articulate it, even when unaware that there is something called Reconstructionism or a giant in our time named Mordecai Kaplan. On June 11, 1981, Mordecai Kaplan was 100 years old. His life has spanned with precision the century that began with the great migration of the Jews from Eastern Europe. He was already 33 when the Balfour Declaration was issued, and when, in 1934, he published his classic Judaism as a Civilization, he was 53. It is impossible to imagine how, if at all, we would have understood ourselves these last nearly 50 years had we not had the benefit of Kaplan's guidance. His combination of intellectual tenacity and spiritual depth has affected us all—in part, no doubt, because of his brilliance and scope, but in larger part— perhaps—because he has never thought for the sake of thinking. He has thought, and written, and taught, always, as an advocate of the living Jewish people and what it might yet accomplish. —Eds. I was graduated from Yeshiva College in June 1945. In that same month—on June 12—at the Hotel McAlpin in New York, a group of zealous rabbis of the Agudath Harabbanim watched, no one protesting, while an ordained Orthodox rabbi set on fire the prayer-book that Mordecai Kaplan had authored, and then, together, joined in the excommunication of Mordecai Kaplan. When I came to the Jewish Theological Seminary, where Kaplan taught, I was interested in learning how Kaplan was reacting to this inflammatory event. He was taking it quite stoically. Despite the ugliness of the proceeding he felt it evidenced signs of theological progress. After all, some 500 years earlier Calvin had not burnt Servetus’s writings; he had burnt Servetus. Still, despite his humor, it was impossible in 1945 to be unaware of the incivility and insult heaped upon Kaplan even by his academic colleagues. He was reviled because he had published an innovative Haggadah in 1941, chastised and told to cease and desist from his efforts to democratize the synagogue and enfranchise the Jewish woman. No man can successfully withstand that kind of hostility without an inner confidence that what he is doing is right. That conviction does not derive from some chapters in Matthew Arnold or a few aphorisms from Feuerbach. It derives from a rootedness in the depths of one's tradition. I would like to characterize the temperament of Kaplan’s ideology by tracing it back to the vital Jewish nerve on which it depends, to the subterranean currents of Jewish life that remain repressed and neglected because Establishment institutions and Establishment Jewish theology are still not comfortable with them. Page 1 Harold Schulweis, a contributing editor of this magazine, is rabbi of Temple Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California. His article, “An I For An I,” appeared in MOMENT, December 1980. The Shirt of Flame The Kaplan I know is not the one portrayed by a good number of his critics and expositors. They read him flat. To them he is essentially a product of French sociology and American pragmatism, a dash of Durkheim and a sprinkle of Santayana. To them he wields an analytic scalpel forever probing and dissecting the sancta of traditional supernaturalism. They see him as an incorrigible Americanized Litvak. In this they miss the traditional Jewish fire locked in the marrow of his bones, the depth of Jewish affirmation entailed in his negations. Surely he has been influenced by Levy Bruhl and William James. But they are the branches upon which many of his arguments are hung. Branches are not roots. To understand the original power of Kaplan's thrust we must touch the sources of his motivation. What passional promptings lie behind his reconstruction of Judaism? What explains the obduracy of his stance that enabled him, despite heavy pressures, to remain solidly within the Jewish religious establishment? Beneath his external garments, Kaplan wears a shirt of flame. There is in him an impatience, a restlessness, a daring. The Talmud has an expression that captures the nature of this spiritual trait: “chutzpah klapei shemaiah”—religious audacity. It is a unique form of audacity that the rabbinic tradition attributes to unusual religious personalities. The Talmud and Midrash provide fascinating accounts of this spiritual chutzpah. A celebrated one is based on Exodus, chapter 32, in which God despairs over the infidelity of the Jewish people worshipping the golden calf. God’s wrath waxes hot, and He is determined to destroy the Jewish people. As the Bible puts' it, God addresses Moses: “Now let Me go, let Me be alone.” But Moses persists to contend with God. At the end, God expresses regret for His intention to destroy the worshippers of the golden calf. There the Biblical tale ends and the rabbinic imagination begins. What went on between Moses, the hero of the Jewish people, and God that led the latter to exclaim, “Now let Me go, let Me be alone.”? The Midrash relates that Moses grabbed hold of the garment of God in the manner that a man seizes the garment of a friend, and said to God, “I will not let You go until You forgive this people. You would profane Your Name, God, were You to do what You say You will do.” God would repent—but then confesses that it is too late for Him to change His mind now. “What can I do? How can I retreat from My own oath? For I declared to destroy this people.” Then Moses counselled God, “Did You not teach us that if a man makes an oath and seeks to have it annulled, he may go to a sage and the sage may annul the oath? Come to me, God, and I will annul Yours.” Then Moses sat down, enwrapped in his tallit, while the Holy One, blessed be He, stood before him and asked that His oath be abrogated. “Do You regret that which You had planned to do to this people?” Moses asks God. God admits, “I deeply regret the intention of this evil that I had against the Jewish people.” And Moses responds, “It is annulled. It is annulled. There is no oath here; there is no swearing.” We are obliged to take this story seriously, and to understand the meaning that informs this astounding imagery. For this is no isolated idiosyncratic tale. There are many stories buried in the tradition that play with the same image, dozens of episodes that describe Hannah, Elijah and Moses, religious heroes who dare to "hurl words against the heavens." (Berachoth 32a,b) The tradition is far from horrified by these heroes and their sharp words. The, tradition Page 2 does not take such audacious acts as. blasphemous. There is no call for the burning of books or reputations, no invocation of anathema, no charge of hubris, no indictment for lese majeste, an insult against the sovereignty of God. To the contrary, the response of God in so many cases resembles the type of response that a mature parent has when his son or daughter challenges him with arguments and positions that the parent himself has inculcated in the child. Thus we find in classic rabbinic literature God proudly declaring after each such confrontation with religious heroes, "You have instructed Me, you have revived Me, you have triumphed over Me." Kaplan himself often spoke of how, when he was a young boy, he would argue with his Bible and Talmud teacher and point out contradictions. Hearing of young Mordecai's challenging ways, Kaplan's father, Rabbi Israel, who was a rosh yeshiva in Europe, would pinch Mordecai's cheek and tell him, “You don’t let yourself be fooled, my son.” We have before us a uniquely Jewish understanding of the. “homo religiosis”-a religious typology far removed from Peretz's Bontsche Schweig. Here there is no adoration of quiescence or acquiescence, no praise of trembling, following, obeying, “amen-saying” as the marks of piety. The Jewish religious hero neither swallows nor spits. There is neither passivity on the one hand nor, on the other, the angry shaking of a fist at the mud- bespattered Heavens. The religious dissenter is no apostate shouting, “It makes no difference, good or bad. It is all one.” The religious audacity of which we speak is rooted in the profoundest loyalty. To defy is not to deny. It is a dissent born of affirmation. It is touchingly reflected in a tale told by the disciples of Menachem Mendel of Kotzk. A pious Jew came to Menachem Mendel and said, “I am afraid that I no longer believe. I look at the world and I see its mendacity, I see its cruelty, and I begin to doubt that there is a God.” Menachem Mendel answers, “Vos art es dir?” “Why do you care?” “But, Rabbi, I see the exploitation of the poor, I see that good people are treated poorly, and that bad people are prosperous.” And again, from Menachem Mendel, “Why then do you care?” The disciple is upset. “What do you mean, ‘Why do I care?’ My whole life has no meaning if there is no justice, if there is no God, if there is no Providence in the world.” Then Menachem Mendel concluded, “If you care so much, you have nothing to fear about your doubts.
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